The present invention relates to a connector assembly for use in interconnecting a pair of electrical components and, more particularly, to such a connector assembly which provides a grounding connection for a shielded cable.
Modular plugs have been coming into increasing commercial prominence, particularly in the telephone field where they are used in the connection of cords from the wall outlet to the telephone base and from the base to the handset. Such plugs typically have a one-piece plastic housing defining a chamber wherein the various cable conductors are contacted by portions of terminal elements. Other portions of these elements are exposed so that when the plug is inserted into the piece of equipment to be connected, each exposed portion is contacted by a corresponding terminal in that piece of equipment to complete the appropriate circuits. Such modular plugs are fast and simple in use and avoid the need to make individual screw connections within the piece of telephone equipment. It will be appreciated that such plugs have wide application for interconnecting other types of electrical equipment where fast connection and disconnection is desired.
It is often necessary to provide modular plugs with grounding systems where the plugs are used with shielded cable. Such a combination offers electromagnetic interference and radio frequency interference protection for equipment such as computers and their peripherals, video games and point-of-sale and process control equipment. A typical method of providing a grounding system included providing an aperture intersecting the cable passageway so that a grounding pin could be inserted, in an interference fit, over the top of the exposed shield thereby compressing the cable against the floor of the passageway. While this method worked reasonably well for a cable having a very small range of dimensional tolerances, it did not perform satisfactorily with the normal tolerance range of such cables. For example, if the cable used had a thickness near the maximum of the tolerance range, the grounding pin could be inserted, if at all, only with great difficulty. On the other hand, if the cable dimension was at the minimum end of the range, the pin could be inserted too easily. While a grounding connection was initially provided, the cable jacket material could experience cold flow with age causing an interruption of the grounding circuit.